A&T Recommends :: Building a Freelance Career — eBook
“THESE ARE PRACTICAL PROCESSES THAT I’VE USED OVER THE LAST DECADE TO SELL WORK TO THE LARGEST NATIONAL PLATFORMS.”
— SPIKE JOHNSON
The road to freelancing is almost never smoothly paved. You are bound to run into a few bumps along the way. And depending on where you are on your creative journey, you’ll either be capable of maneuvering around obstacles encountered, or you’ll temporarily have to face a roadblock or two.
If you are just starting out, the latter probably rings a familiar bell. There are likely a handful of roadblocks that have kept you from finding the success you envisioned on this entrepreneurial path. You may be self-taught and completely unaware of industry processes and practices. You may have a formal educational background but are missing the range of work due to lack of access to stories. You may have the education and the reputable work but find that it’s difficult to get recognition or assignments. The scenarios are endless, but you more than likely know where you are hitting the proverbial wall.
Luckily, you don't have to remain stuck. There are solutions available at every corner of the web, one of which we are pleased to share with you from a fellow photojournalist, filmmaker and writer Spike Johnson.
Spike is a documentary producer with more than a decade’s worth of freelance experience working on documentary commercial briefs for publications with private clients and mainstream media outlets. His work explores themes of social conflict that lie at the edges of the human experience and has landed him in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, Vice Magazine, to name a few.
His new eBook Build A Freelance Career in Documentary Media was released for free in December, 2021 as a direct response to some of the most frequently asked questions he’s received over the years from up-and-coming freelance photographers, filmmakers and writers.
“How do you sell your work?”
“How do you get assignments?”
“How do you find access?”
“I put together this little eBook with some walk-throughs on routes to paid publication,” Johnson shares. “This is a guide for those starting out, an overview and a roadmap. It’s for anyone hoping to find a way into documentary media, for those wanting to find profit in an evening side-hustle, or anyone wanting to transition from a nine-to-five career to the excitement of full-time freelancing.”
We highly recommend this eBook as the starting point to your freelance journey in documentary media. It’s the perfect entry-level resource that gives you a bird’s eye view of all of the topics an emerging freelancer should be concerned about. It’s short, direct, and, more importantly, takes practical insights and lessons from Spike’s own experiences over the last decade working as a freelance photojournalist and filmmaker for some of the largest national platforms in the World.
Inside, you’ll discover quick guides to selling your work, receiving assignments, developing a self-motivated mindset, learning to embrace discomfort, pitching work to editors, building contacts and much more.
You can get the eBook below.
Build A Freelance Career in Documentary Media
by Spike Johnson
To hear more about how to build a freelance career in documentary media, tune in to our 3-part series with Spike Johnson on the Artisans & Trade podcast (linked below) as he explains how to gain access to stories as a photographer, how to pitch and sell a story, and how to price and negotiate your work.
